It is not a cheap gimmick. The only problem if there is one is in making them playable characters where they should probably just remain very interesting NPCs. Give us good enough information on the race and a creative game group can make it playable on their own if they really want to and don't need to buy a book that tells them it is okay.

Look most animal species and even many non-animal species on the planet communicate. Humans are the only ones we know of so far that do it with WORDS. So what is so strange about a Sasquatch being the same as every other (millions or billions depending on how you slice) species on the planet?

Now if you really want to you could play a Cockatrice, the books just don't explicitly spell it out for good reason. It would take a whole book to explain how to roleplay and GM a cockatrice setting so some things just aren't worth causing this kind of trouble. Heck in Lord of the Rings Online you can play a chicken which then can't communicate with all your regular friends playing a humanoid. There are no game police to enforce what you can or can't do in your own setting.

Mimicry, full-on sapience, and human-level mental stats are the big ones along with the fact that, as Dr. Funkenstein pointed out, they do use a form of spoken communication amongst themselves. I think those qualities (not specifically Mimicry, but it helps too) push the sasquatch far closer to the human than to any other of the millions of species on the planet.

The reason why I brought up animal communication instead of human language is that if Sasquatches are so different than we would need to look at different types of animal communication instead of human languages. As has been pointed out animal communication and human language are different. I would also point out that discrete lexical markers exist in both animal communication and human language. The major difference I perceive between animal communication and human language is that human language is able to deal with the abstract and unknowable.

Strong auditory learning with wide vocal ability give rise to a powerful trait to be able to learn language quickly. It does not mean the Sasquatch thought patterns have changed with the power of mimicry, but is utilizing the mimicked discrete lexical markers as correlating symbols to the original Sasquatch language.

However one should be careful in knowing that mimickry does not mean understanding of context. An aeroplane may convert into Sasquatch as a giant bird, and may give rise to questions such as "are they good to eat" or "are they dangerous".

Most likely Sasquatch uses an hyper-adoptive verbal expression for vocabulary expansion, and human languages may cause too great a change to the original Sasquatch language for the changes to be adopted. Furthermore with additions of discrete lexical markers to a language means also changes in modes of thought, which may endanger the unadulterated language forcing a limited cultural contact to avoid any further contamination.

The issue I perceive is that human communication and presence is massive on Earth and this leads to a situation where even animals have adapted themselves to survive inside of human culture. The cultural shock of changing from a nature oriented hunter-gatherer culture to one of extensive human contact with its technological marvels would be a massive one. Furthermore limitations of language and using communication devices would leave them at a severe disadvantage to the human population and to their existence outside of curiosities.

An AR based dictionary would involve at least 20 years of study to be able to correlate say English expressions and context into Sasquatch. It would still mean that the dictionary would be erroneus as both languages develop over that period of time.

As a quick addendum: I do not think anyone will continue with this train of thought. We all want to play elf strippers with big guns, and not necessarily delve into the wonderful, but mystically realm of language acquisition. It would, nonetheless, be interesting to see how many linguists are there are here on the forums.

that again walks into the trap that the sasquatch brain and the human brain is wired the same.

also, adults always have a harder time learning new things then young ones...

so unless you can get hold of a saquatch young, and raise it as a human child, one would not know...

Heres another answer... Because, they're magical beings. Supernatural, just like casting spells and the astral plane. You let those exist "because shadowrun says so" and for the same reason, sasquatches can't speak.

OK folks, how about this...

The High Foreheads in Shadowrun of 2070s haven't figured it out after decades of research and testing. How the hell are we primitive screwheads supposed to even come close to figuring out an answer?

This is kind of a silly argument. At my table, we've joked about how strange this is a bit. But we keep it. Not because we're slaves to the books or anything like that. We keep it because it's actually interesting. It is a strange quirk, and a significant part of what makes sasquatches not just big hairy dudes.

Personally, I like the idea that a sasquatch who can mimic enough english (or another language) to communicate would be unique and strange. But they wouldn't have their own voice, or their own personal inflection. It's just mimicry. They're going through the motions, but it's not really natural to them. I don't know enough to make up the pseudo-science to justify this, but that's ok. I'm not a zoologist. It doesn't bother me.

But if it really bothers you, then assume that most sasquatches can learn the language. It won't break anything. It's certainly not worth hurling insults over.

Well not always. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

I was in Boot Camp long ago, a fellow recruit in my squad, joined the USN already fluent in Mandarin Chinese and Russian. During the course of 8 weks of Boot he learned Spanish so well that he had the local accent/dialect down. When he spoke to some of the family of a native speaker, his Spanish speaking unnerved them. He was a short stocky blonde California surfer kid.

What was his planned career ie NEC in the USN Crypto Tech Interpretative, he left Boot Camp with a Top Secret Plus Clearance, and went directly to the Defense Language Institute in Monteray, Ca.

WMS

It's not like they CAN'T communicate with Metahumanity, it's just that it takes a bit more for them to do that.

Hey, guess what, mute Metas are the same way! I'm sure the Tech built for Sasquatches were really started out for them!

Anyhow, Sassies are a pretty easy-going bunch for the most part, and great at parties, so they sound weird, big deal! I'd allow one in my group!

For one thing, be a damn good way to have a biological method of breaking voice-recognition systems! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

crypto? sounds like a knack for maths as well then. how able to think on his feet was he?

They have their own language, can mimic our language, they can understand our language through translation, but have a mental block to learn it. A lot of humans have this problem, why is it beyond reason that a totally imaginary being has it too?

Autism anyone?

becase this:



is a fairly unknown issue in a world where english is becoming more and more a world language...

or to put it a different way, if your first language is english, you rarely have a real need to learn more of them...

ignorance is bliss and all that...

may be, altho autism in popular culture are one of two kinds, the biological computer, and the screaming demon that could just as well pass for adhd these days...

thanks for the "help", hollywood...

Well he was not one to get demerits unlike myself and others. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

WMS

Let's face it we all secretly want to play a wookie.

I'm not aware of any humans who can speak a language fluently, can exactly duplicate and perceive every word you say, have the capicity to associate those words with concepts, and have the capacity and (important part here) desire to learn a new language but... can't?

No, I'm not aware of anyone like that in the real world.

There's many who can't learn to communicate well for a variety of reasons. Even the example earlier in the thread of an older person not learning a second language demonstrates more of the "set in my ways" mentality rather than any kind of "physically and mentally unable to do so" handicap. But there's no solid and, more importantly, believable reason why sasquatches are barred from ever learning a spoken language. They have the ability, they have the desire, they have the mental and physical requirements. But they can't. Because "that's just the way it is."

If they didn't commuicate verbally at all I could almost be convinced that it was beyond their capabilities. But the fact that they can and do completely nullifies any arguments to the contrary as far as I'm concerned.

Furry lovers. All of us.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish you were someone else.

My take on the situation (as if you cared, right?) is that Sasquatches lack an intuitive method through which they can group different pronunciations of phoenemes. In humans, I would think that imperfect mimicry leads to grouping all the variations on pronunciation based on vocal output when attempting to replicate them, and this allows a human to turn various pronunciations into the same word-concept reliably. A sasquatch has the capacity to mimic sounds perfectly, so their neurological representation of sounds is a lot more nuanced than a human's. This prevents them understanding spoken language, because they don't group two different people saying the same word, as they get produced differently in the vocal system of the Sasquatch.

A Sasquatch can mimic the output of a Linguasoft appropriately, but it won't be able to understand what other people are saying because it doesn't turn the same word spoken by different people into the same concept. They would still be reliant on a Linguasoft to interpret what other people are saying and a language skill represents the ability to speak the language without assistance, mechanically. If you have to rely on a Linguasoft to enable you to speak a language with natives, you can't represent that by giving the character a skill because their language ability is bottlenecked on the quality of the Linguasoft.

They could learn the associations between different people speaking the same word and the word itself, but they'd need to learn each and every person's voice independantly. This is far more work than most people are willing to go to in order to learn a language, especially when you can buy some software that does it all for you.


It seems that many people are assuming that Sasquatches can do humanlike sound to word-concept association. This does not seem possible when they lack natural vocalisation grouping mechanisms.

Not only would they need to learn one persons voice, but learn it happy, sad, sleepy, angry, etc and all the vocal inflection that goes with it.

If you cannot imagine it, does it mean it doesn't or can't exist? Is it a limit of imagination or existence?

If you can't explain it, is it less real?

That Mimicry power must be pretty useless, then, if they can't use it for anything aside from directly copying something. If they don't know when or how to use it, such as associating it with situations or targets, then what's the point in even having it as a note-worthy critter power? It would be little more than a random-noise-making power. Nevermind that they do, in fact, use the power to communicate verbally.

I knew someone that just couldn't learn a language even though she tried to. Yeah, she was set in her ways, and she was old but that represents a psychological and physical reason why she just couldn't.



How could there be, it's all made up!

You're misreading my intent, it seems. I never argued that Sasquatches are incapable of reading context, I argued that they are incapable of identifying words spoken by two different speakers as the same word because they have a different set of sound-similarity tolerances due to the fact that their vocal system allows for much more accurate mimicry and mimicry forms the basis of linguistic capability.

A Sasquatch is capable of understanding context just fine (duh, human-normal Log and Int), but their understanding of audio context is far more nuanced and precise than a human. This extends to the point that languages based on a human audial understanding allow too much variance for the Sasquatch to piece together the phoenetic basis.


They would still be able to learn how voices change when the subject is undergoing certain emotions, but the actual changes in how particular lingual elements are sounded would be distinct enough that the Sasquatch would be unable to understand them as the same element spoken under a different emotional outlook.